Sunday, August 3, 2014

The Flood

Photo courtesy of NBC Los Angeles

Tuesday afternoon, we saw
what can happen when one hundred year old infrastructure collapses.A water main ruptured north of the UCLA
campus sending 20 million gallons of precious, drought-year water cascading
south to flood the campus and cause damage that is still being tallied.The website BuzzFeedput together a nice graphic showing just how much water
was lost in comparison to typical household usage.Suffice to say, 20 million gallons represents approximately four percent of total water usage for the city on any given day,
according to the DWP.And this comes in
the middle of a drought year where cities and local communities in California
are enacting new laws to make it a criminal offense to water a lawn or wash
down a driveway.

This break is only one
in a series of water main ruptures and sinkholes that have plagued the city
water system over the last few years as aging pipes and mains begin to
fail.The funds necessary to replace this
infrastructure across the city would total millions of dollars and would result
in losses in revenue as well as major problems for commuters as whole streets
are torn up to reach the failing pipes.However, to wait for crippling collapses like Tuesday’s fiasco is to
court certain disaster.UCLA announced
late in the week that several buildings and athletic fields suffered major
damage resulting in millions of dollars in repairs.

With the 405 project in the Sepulveda Pass still in progress, the closing of Sunset Boulevard for repairs
made traveling to the west side of the city from the valley a challenge.This only highlights another problem:even if the city can find the funding to
replace aging infrastructure, the time involved in completing the projects
means traffic problems for commuters, noise issues for residents in the areas,
and interruption of city services.The
405 project to widen the freeway and replace aging bridges has gone on for so
long that it is questionable whether it has been worth all the trouble and
inconvenience for a simple one lane addition.

In the valley, the
east-west streets in Studio City have been torn up for some time now.Often to come west, traffic must go as far north
as Chandler Boulevard to cut over.These
areas are filled with driving hazards like steel plates covering trenches, sharp
objects that can puncture tires, and heavy equipment that presents obstructions
that prevent drivers from seeing oncoming traffic and pedestrians.

The reality of living
in the city is that things must be maintained and refurbished, especially in
the case of roads and highways. Los
Angeles faces two challenges:one, finding
the funds to repair the aging infrastructure to avoid disasters like the Sunset
Boulevard water main break; two, finding a way to complete these projects
expeditiously so that people can get to work and school on time in their daily
commutes.Public transportation has
improved in the last few years, but we are a long way from buses and subways
being the preferred mode for getting around the city.

In L.A., we always
seem one slim margin away from disaster.I shudder to think what would happen here if our water became undrinkable,
as it did in Toledo, Ohio this weekend.We talk a lot about being prepared for emergencies.We hold drills several times a year for earthquakes
and other natural disasters.Yet, when the brush fire breaks out, the street ruptures under pressure from broken water
mains and natural gas leaks, or civil unrest boils over into the streets, our
city is paralyzed.As our streets and
freeways face never-ending congestion, these issues will only become more
prominent and dangerous.

The issue Tuesday with
shutting down the leak more quickly had to do with increasing pressure on other
aging mains in the area risking further ruptures.This is unacceptable.If it means repealing Proposition 13, the property
tax initiative signed into law in 1978, so be it.That measure is often cited when we are faced
with libraries closing, schools being underfunded, and infrastructure collapsing.Tuesday, we watched 20 million gallons bleed
away into the streets and ultimately into the storm drains, lost to us in this
drought year, and it seems with global climate change, the drought may be with
us a long time, maybe even permanently.Somehow,
things have to change.

2 comments:

Luckily, any engineer will tell you, water in the storm drains is ultimately cleaned and put back into the system at some point. Although not readily usable now, it's not completely wasted either.

On a side note, any engineer would tell you that our infrastructure is horrible. The nations infrastructure averages a D+ or something like that. A wise professor once told me, "The surest way to make a great nation fall is to starve its people and ignore the infrastructure."